Last weekend we watched Night of the Hunter(1955, directed by Charles Laughton) with our older kids. Some of them didn’t get it, and one was disappointed that it wasn’t “live action”—I guess he meant color? Anyway, this is a black and white movie, and even though I’ve seen it before, it blew my mind; and some of the kids haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

A synopsis: A young father is fed up with worrying about whether his family will survive the Depression, so he robs a bank, killing two people. With the police on their way, he thrusts the money at his young son John, and swears him and his little sister Pearl to secrecy about where it is hidden—hiding it even from their mother (Shelley Winters as the fatally pliable Willa Harper). The boy sees his father knocked to the ground and dragged away to jail.

Meanwhile, a preternaturally sinister Robert Mitchum as the Rev. Harry Powell rolls into town to preach “the religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us.” He’s on the prowl for another young widow with money. He’s arrested for car theft, and happens to bunk with the father, who’s awaiting execution.

The father is hanged, the preacher is released, and he heads straight for the town where the new widow lives with John and Pearl. He proceeds to charm and beguile every last resident, covering the naked evil in his heart with a dreadfully charismatic imitation of piety.

Despite my son’s grousing, this movie had to be in black and white. Exquisitely framed, it makes constant thematic use of light and shadow, day and night, indoor and outdoor scenes. The time of day is never in question, and it always means something: the stark noon of the children’s Golgatha as their classmates taunt them with an execution song; the unsleeping vigil of the preacher silhouetted against the sky (John wonders, “Don’t he never sleep?”), so different from the faith-filled vigil of the children’s savior, Rachel (Lillian Gish), rocking on the porch with a shotgun in her lap. Sleeplessness is for two kinds: the hunter, and the prey. Lights picks out the innocent ones; shadows starkly define the shape of evil as it searches and searches.

The acting, especially that of the children, is ahead of its time. The delicacy of emotion on young John’s face, and even the moment when foolish little Pearl realizes that her beloved stepdaddy is evil—these are overwhelming. So many vulnerable faces.

And here’s something you won’t see every day: The movie deals masterfully with the various ways that people distort Christianity—the lies people believe about love. There is the ice cream parlor matron, Icey Spoon, whose bitter dismissal of married love (“I just lie there thinkin’ about my canning”) contrasts poisonously with the sugary adulation she lavishes on the preacher, pushing Willa into his grasp.

There is Willa herself, who is willing to discard her healthy wifely affections for a hysterical mysogynistic fanaticism: “My whole body’s just a-quiverin’ with cleanness!” She even seems to know, at the last minute, that her children are in danger, but placidly awaits her fate, mistaking a deadly docility for Christian obedience.

There is poor Ruby, the orphaned teenager so achingly hungry for love that she has no will. There is the drained old woman doling out raw potatoes to the young drifters who turn up at her door, feeding them as she must, but driving them away in weary disgust with suffering.

And then there is Rachel, the rock-hard foster mother of the world, discarded by her own biological children, and on a rampage to clean, protect, teach and love any other child that God sends to her door. The Bible stories she teaches are always about the children in her care.

And of course Harry Powell himself. What is he really after? He doesn’t seem to be rich, despite his long and lucrative career of deadly religious seduction. He charms the country folk with a hokey pantomime of the triumph of LOVE over HATE (tattooed on his fingers)—but the diseased nature of his true ardor is deeper than a love of money: We see his killing knife come erect at a burlesque show, as he contemplates ridding God’s world of another “lacy,” “perfume-smelling” “thing with curly hair.” Worse than a love of money, worse than a hatred of women, he believes with all his heart that death is the work of God. His only regret is that “There’s too many of them—I can’t kill the whole world!”

And yes, he loses in the end.

So! Go see this movie. There is not a wasted scene, not a careless line of dialogue, not an ounce of sloppiness in the entire film. I would recommend it for viewers over the age of 10. While no explicit sex or violence are shown on screen, the sense of menace, corruption and loneliness may be overwhelming for more sensitive viewers—although the ending is satisfying and full of hope. It’s an excellent movie as a story and as a visual treat, and as a spark for discussions about love and its abusers.

Oh, I didn’t even have time to talk about the songs! Well, you’ll have to watch it for yourself.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for awhile now—to me it seems like a great, atmospheric movie to watch around Halloween so I’ve been saving it just for that. Not long until I get it on Netflix!

Posted by Patt on Saturday, Sep, 17, 2011 9:26 PM (EST):

That movie creeped me out… The evil in it was too convincing.

Posted by Kristine on Saturday, Sep, 17, 2011 9:05 PM (EST):

What a charming second comment from Richard Connell. I read it Richard. I will check out those films. And by the way ... in my earlier comment, I meant unsettling.

Posted by John barone on Saturday, Sep, 17, 2011 6:12 PM (EST):

This is James Agee’s movie. Although the great Charles Laughton is named director, he was following an Agee film script that specified camera movements, positioning, lighting etc. Laughton did this as a favor to Agee who must been his friend. The themes are typical of Agee’s work and the approach is that which he sets forth in his book on movies “Agee On Film”. See my earlier note on him above.

Posted by Darrell on Saturday, Sep, 17, 2011 4:29 PM (EST):

The scene where John and Pearl were drifting down the river in a boat and being watched by owls, frogs, and other critters was absolutely mesmerising. This is one of my all-time great films; also, I’m pretty sure it’s on the list of the greatest 100 American films ever made.

When first released, it was severly critized and was not successul in theaters. This is why Laughton never directed another movies - a real tradedy for movie buffs like myself.

Posted by Richard Connell on Saturday, Sep, 17, 2011 12:31 PM (EST):

Often, I will go back to an article where I have posted a comment to see if it is still there.—and to look at my comment again. Yes, that was me! I wrote that! Someone else may have actually read it!

Posted by Tom Hanson on Saturday, Sep, 17, 2011 11:39 AM (EST):

for me the real pity was that the film was crucified by the critics when it came out and it didn’t even get the audience that might have paid attention to critical praise and spread the word. I first looked into it in the 1990’s at the age of forty something and it was as frightening as PSYCHO but like Willam Wylers THE COLLECTOR owes almost nothing at all to Hitchcock. Terrifed me. Robert Mitchums finest portrayal of evil, bar none, not even CAPE FEAR from the 60’s (not Scorcese’s remake).
Someone has mentioned the hymns. Brilliantly used. And I’d like to put in a word for Walter Schumann who wrote the music. Certainly the finest work of his little known career. Wonderfully gentle sensitive and threatening, and sometimes all three things at once. On the Internet Movie Data Base a guy named Arthur Showalter, by some quirkin their computer program, gets that credit. A look at Showalter’s bio on that same IMDB data base has him dead in 1924 and notes that he wrote the melody of Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. If you watch the main title of the film you will see Schumann’s credit as composer. Look him up on IMDB and he IS listed as composer of Night of the Hunter. A pity, because it is as fine a score as that of To Kill a Mockingbird by Elmer Bernstein, The Miracle Worker by Lawrence Rosenthal and the latest True Grit by Carter Burwell.

Posted by Kristine on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 11:08 PM (EST):

Quite a movie. Really insettling. My mom said as a kid it gave her nightmares ... She never trusted Robert Mitchum to be good in any movie after. He does this evil so well.

Posted by Luiz Oscar Dubeux on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 10:07 PM (EST):

I saw this film in the same year it was released—I was 13 then.
I think this was the first depiction of Good and Evil I saw in film,
so terribly well done, so terrifying that made me , a boy at the time,
think many times over about the consequences of my acts.
By the way, Robert Mitchum WAS a great actor !

Posted by Katherine on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 5:41 PM (EST):

I rewatched Insomnia on based on your review, and deeply enjoyed it. I’ll give this one ago next.

Posted by Nordic Breed on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 3:53 PM (EST):

I’ve seen this movie several times and it freaks me out every time. Charles Laughton was a genius, but because “Night of the Hunter” did so poorly at the box office, he never directed another film, restricting himself to stage and screen acting. His artistry is impeccable and all the actors turned in a great performance, including the children. By and large, I’m not a fan of western made films, preferring the classics from the far East, but this one is at the top of my list.

Posted by john on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 3:24 PM (EST):

The movie is written by James Agee, who wrote the depression classic “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” and directed by the great Charles Laughton. Like Flannery O’Connor he referred often to his Christian roots. He was Angilican Catholic (a type of High Episcopelian) but had his own belief set which included a strong bent to the lilberal left. The film is purely Christian in its orientation however. Agee died young. His novel “A Death in the Family” won the Pulitzer Prize. He was older than O’Connor and may have influenced her. They were both Southerners. He was from Tennessee she was Georgia.

Posted by Perelandra on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 2:10 PM (EST):

When this film was new, a magazine spread about it frightened me out of seeing it but I’ very glad to have caught up with it recently. You will seldom see a creepier depiction of Evil or a more luminous rendering of Good in American cinema.

Posted by Nick on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 12:51 PM (EST):

I still get shivers from Mitchum…

Posted by Richard Connell on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 12:47 PM (EST):

Yeah, neat film. Neat, also, that the one film Charles Laughton directed was such a classic. I recently learned that Alfred Hitchcock was Jesuit taught Catholic. Two of his films that I recently saw, I Confess and The Wrong Man, are two of the most Catholic, films that I have ever seen and people who enjoyed Night of the Hunter might like those films also.

Posted by crazylikeknoxes on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 12:40 PM (EST):

Sorry, I have to hear it from the Jerk before I’ll consider it.

Posted by Claire on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 12:12 PM (EST):

Thanks for the recommendation. I love Flannery O’Connor and so much of her work is about people and “the religion they work up betwixt the Almighty and themselves”...I have to wonder if this was inspired by any of her stories.

Posted by Simcha Fisher on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 12:01 PM (EST):

@Theresa - oh, good catch, thanks! Sleeplessness is also for me, but I still gotta get up and type.

Posted by EegahInc on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 11:34 AM (EST):

There’s not too many better scenes in all of movies than the one where Rachel & Harry sing together on the front porch.

Posted by John Herreid on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 10:47 AM (EST):

One of my top ten favorite movies. “Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms…”

BTW, the same hymn was also used in a completely different context for the Coen Brothers’ version of True Grit.

A few years back I got a copy of the novel that Night of the Hunter is based on. The movie is pretty close to the book, using large chunks of the book’s dialogue.

Too bad Laughton never directed anything else. But if you’re only going to make one movie, make it something like Night of the Hunter.

Posted by Theresa on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 10:13 AM (EST):

P.S. I think the line you wrote, “Sleeplessness is for two kinds: the hunted, and the prey,” was supposed to read “the hunter, and the prey”?

Posted by Theresa on Friday, Sep, 16, 2011 10:12 AM (EST):

Wow, I can’t wait to see it! Your descriptions are tantalizing; I’ve always loved movies / books with thorough character development and honest human relationships. This sounds fantastic!

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